Clinic For Low-income Patients To Close

August 24, 2008|By Tammie Smith Richmond Times-Dispatch

A health center in northern Henrico County that provides care to low-income people and charges them based on their ability to pay is closing.

In a letter dated Monday, the board and staff of Irvin Gammon Craig Health Center advises clients that the facility will shut its doors Sept. 15. The health center is located on the campus of St. Joseph's Villa.

About a year ago, the health center came under the management of the Daily Planet, a federally supported health center that also provides care to low-income uninsured or underinsured residents and to homeless people.

"The Craig Health Center has been a small center always, and its population is limited by the size of the facility," said JoAnne Kirk Henry, a Craig Health Center board member and director of the Central Virginia Nursing Leadership Institute.

"The board decided about a year and a half ago that its ultimate viability really would depend on its ability to partner with other organizations."

The Daily Planet became its partner and applied for an expansion grant, Henry said. Under the plan, the Craig Health Center would have become a satellite site of the Daily Planet.

"We were just notified within the last two weeks that we did not receive funding," Henry said. "The safety net is very fragile, and this is just one indication of how fragile it is. Small, safety-net health care providers function on shoestring budgets."

The health center has relied a great deal on foundation grants to pay staff and operating expenses. According to information that the nonprofit facility must file with the Internal Revenue Service, the center received about $353,000 in direct public support and generated about $132,000 in government fees and contracts in 2006.

The Richmond Memorial Health Foundation has awarded grants to the Craig Health Center in the past.

"I think Richmond and central Virginia is at a very critical point right now in terms of the sustainability of our health safety net," said Jeffrey S. Cribbs Sr., the foundation's executive director.